Editorial: ODOT award could be better spent

Maybe it really isn't all about winning and losing -- at least if your company is on the Ohio Department of Transportation's short list to submit bids and designs for the Cleveland Innerbelt Bridge Project.

The agency defended its plan to award up to $1 million apiece to two bidders that submit designs for the Interstate 90 project but don't win the contract.

The stipends were called into question in April by Inspector General Thomas Charles, whose office challenged whether the plan was legal, justified and fiscally prudent, according to The Associated Press.

Transportation Director Jolene Molitoris said the payments will increase competition and result in high-quality design proposals. She also said her agency has the authority to make the payments, but Charles said state law doesn't explicitly grant it, though it doesn't prohibit it, either.

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While other states have done so, this would mark the first time that Ohio has offered such incentives on this type of large-scale project.

The contract will be awarded in September, and construction on the $450 million project is to begin later this year and finish in 2014. The project is getting $85 million from the federal economic stimulus, but stimulus money will not be used to make the losing-bid payments, transportation officials said.

At first, ODOT put few guidelines in place. In response to the inspector general's report, ODOT has now devised specific criteria for paying the stipends, including requiring specific details regarding the bidders' actual costs, according to a five-page letter the agency wrote to Charles. Also, ODOT will pay whichever is less between $1 million and the cost of creating a design.

While we're pleased that ODOT has agreed to strengthen the requirements surrounding the payments, we still must question whether paying the losing bidders as much as $2 million is the best use of that money.

ODOT contends payments to the unsuccessful bidders are needed because firms will not expend the resources, time and effort to design plans for such a big project unless the state agrees to share the risk and reimburse them for a portion of their costs.

We acknowledge that this is an important project that deserves the best possible design -- which can come at a cost -- and understand that the stretch of I-90 in question is critical to Northeast Ohio. But given the high-profile nature of the project, we're not convinced the stipends are necessary.

On top of which, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of extra money floating around Columbus these days, and it's reasonable to think there's another smaller project that could've benefitted or gotten off the ground with this money.

If such a project exists, surely it would put more Ohioans to work than paying as much as $2 million to companies that were already going to submit designs and bid on this project.

Once the dust settles from this dispute and the inspector general's office has evaluated ODOT's plan, we urge state officials to make clear what authority ODOT has in this regard and to evaluate whether this is the best use of taxpayer dollars.